20 facts you might not know about 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day'

The original Terminator is a low-budget horror movie that barely feels like its sequel. Cameron did the most with that budget, though, as he created a really impressive film with $8.4 million. Cameron was given a bit more cash to work with for his sequel. The budget estimates say that Terminator 2 cost between $94 and $102 million. At the time, that made it the most expensive movie ever.

In 1984, Schwarzenegger was quite early in his career. He had been in 1982’s Conan the Barbarian, but that was his first significant role. For his role in The Terminator, Arnold was reportedly paid $75,000. For the sequel, though, he got a reported salary of a whopping $15 million.

In The Terminator, Sarah Connor is a bit more of a traditional horror movie heroine, kind of a damsel in distress. That’s definitely not the case in Terminator 2. The premise is that the events in the first film have changed Sarah and led to her institutionalization. Sarah is prepped for the robot apocalypse, so much so that Linda Hamilton got into great shape. She spent 13 weeks training six days a week with a personal trainer and learned how to operate a gun.

The producers decided to go with an unknown actor for the young version of John Connor. Eddie Furlong wasn’t even an actor. Furlong has said he “fell” into acting after the casting director of Terminator 2 at a Boys and Girls Club in Pasadena.

Michael Biehn plays Kyle Reese in The Terminator, a soldier sent back in time by the human resistance by the future John Connor. In a weird, bit of time-travel logic, Reese then impregnates Sarah, making him John’s father. Biehn played Reese in a dream sequence shot for the movie, but it did not appear in the theatrical release. However, it was added back in for an extended version of the movie.

The Terminator was successful enough that they began talking about a sequel. However, there was one snag. Cameron already envisioned the T-1000 being made out of liquid metal, and CGI technology was not advanced enough yet. In fact, it wasn’t until Cameron’s 1989 film The Abyss that there was enough proof of concept for the T-1000 to exist and for the sequel to be made.

Some scenes required multiple Sarah Connors, such as when the T-1000 impersonates Sarah. Those scenes needed a double, and fortunately, Linda Hamilton knew just the person for that. Fortunately for the production, Linda had a twin sister, Leslie Hamilton Gearren.

Hey, if you make a film about the future and don’t set it too far in the distance, eventually it will no longer be placed in the future. At that point, it can feel a little different to watch it. While the Terminators are sent back from 2029, so we aren’t quite there yet, the day Skynet becomes self-aware in the film is August 29, 1997.

When you make the highest-grossing film of all time, you have to set your goals pretty high at the box office. Fortunately, Terminator 2 proved to be a huge hit. It made $520.9 million worldwide, finishing as the highest-grossing film of 1991. It’s also still the highest-grossing movie in Schwarzenegger’s career.

Judgment Day got six Oscar nominations, but unsurprisingly, the action film didn’t get nods for acting or screenplay. They were all technical awards, with the most prominent nomination probably being for Best Cinematography. It didn’t win that one, but it did win four Oscars: Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Makeup, and Best Visual Effects.

The MTV Movie Awards had no hesitation in rewarding the acting in Terminator 2. It was the big winner of the 1992 edition of the movie award show. Schwarzenegger, Hamilton, and even Furlong all won awards, with Furlong’s being for Best Breakthrough Performance. T2 also went home with Best Movie at the end of the night.

Playing the T-1000 was a breakout role for Patrick, and he wasn’t shy about capitalizing on that. He cameos at the T-1000 in his police officer form in Wayne’s World, then plays the liquid-metal Terminator again in Last Action Hero. Of course, that was alongside Arnold.

Furlong was 13 when he began filming Judgment Day. A lengthy shooting schedule created some problems. During the filming, his voice began to break and had to be tweaked in post-production. Also, he had a growth spurt, and in one of the last scenes he shot, they actually dug a hole in the ground for him to stand in so that he didn’t suddenly look much taller alongside Hamilton.

In The Terminator, Schwarzenegger’s T-800 is the bad guy. The premise of Terminator 2 is that a T-800 has been reprogrammed by the resistance and sent back in time to protect Sarah and John Connor. In the early promo material, they hid the fact that Arnold’s character made a hero turn. Eventually, once the movie was a hit, they started revealing the twist.

In the first Terminator, Schwarzenegger spoke a mere 58 words. Hey, he was still new to acting, and his accent was quite thick. By 1991, he had done more acting, so he was given a bigger role. Still, he’s not exactly a motormouth in the sequel. Schwarzenegger has 700 words of dialogue in the movie.

The T-1000 did a lot of cool things and involved a lot of fancy special effects. The sound effects team, though, sometimes kept it simple. To create the sound of the T-1000 passing through metal bars, sound designer Gary Rydstrom merely opened a can of dog food and used the sound of the food oozing out of the can.

One of the iconic lines from the movie is “Hasta la vista, baby,” particularly when the Terminator speaks it. Of course, in the Spanish language dub, that loses its effect. For the Spanish version of Terminator 2, they changed the line to “Sayonara, baby.”

Cameron isn’t exactly Alfred Hitchcock, but he has sort of a cameo in the film. For the scene at the end when the T-1000 dies, Cameron recorded and used his own screams.

For the larger silent, just-a-little inhuman T-1000, Patrick took inspiration from a couple of influences in the animal kingdom. He moved like a shark on the hunt when he was moving through crowds, and he also patterned his head movements off of bald eagles.

After the film came out, Universal Studios, along with Cameron, got to work on a new attraction that served as something of a sequel to the movie. Called T2: Battle Across Time, the whole event began with a preshow ostensibly being hosted by a Cyberdyne employee before you are brought into the theater. There, you saw a mix of 3-D film and live-action performers. The attraction opened at Universal Studios in Florida in 1996 and Hollywood in 1999. However, the Hollywood version closed in 2012 and in Florida in 2017. Ah, but don’t give up, “Battle Across Time” lovers. The attraction is still open at Universal Studios Japan.